Homers by relief pitchers
Posted by Andy on February 11, 2008
Here's a simple game finder search, setting the position to pitcher and specifying "sub" rather than "starter".
There have been 171 shttp://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/7kDj such games since 1957.
The three most recent were by Carlos Marmol, Jorge Sosa, and Adam Wainwright, all in 2006. It's been done the most times (4) by Ken Tatum, Lou Sleater, and Mickey McDermott.
I got the idea for this from a comment about Greg Minton, who did it in this game, over at 88 Topps Cards.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:48 am
The most memorable of those (at least for me) has to be Rick Camp's. Here was a guy who was 13-for-175 in his career, and he ties up a game in the bottom of the 18th inning because his team was out of pinch hitters. This after Terry Harper hit a 2-run shot in the bottom of the 13th to tie the score at 10.
Mets vs. Braves, July 4, 1985 -- the most amazing, bizarre game ever in the humble opinion of this writer. (Not to mention the 4:00 AM fireworks show that followed!)
February 12th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Other memories of that night to share - my best friend and I were going to go but waited until the last minute to get to the ticket window and they sold out about 10 people ahead of us in line.... so we went clubbin' and dragged in around 230-3am thinking we were watching TBS' replay of the game like they did overnight back then only to be shocked to find it was 'live'! The truly impressive thing to me is that he (Camp) had the chance to be a hero again..... and struck out to end the game.
Hey, if someone is bored and/or has some time on their hands, could we do a summary report of this list - winning games v losing games etc... whether the HR actually helped the pitchers cause by pulling a game out of the fire, etc? Thanks!
February 12th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Well, a simple W-L total comes out to 61-110 in those 171 games. I think the biggest reason is that in a lot of these games, one team was getting blown out, and the reliever who hit the homer was pitching mop-up duty. The reason relievers don't hit too many homers is because not many bat at all...relievers very rarely bat in the 7th, 8th, or 9th. And if they bat in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th, they've probably come in for an ineffective starting pitcher.
That record is quite telling. Given the fact that the team is guaranteed to have hit at least one homer in the game and STILL has such a lousy winning percentage...